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The Fatal Mistake Crypto Investors are Making Now

I find it amusing that the stock market is attributing so much value to the “blockchain” technology. In reality, blockchain technology is just a piece of software that increases the degree of security for digital transactions. I fail to see how this will revolutionize our lives the way the roll-out of the internet or the implementation of mass production or the invention of the internal combustion engine or the harnessing of electricity changed and affected our daily lives. I believe the technology has been egregiously over-hyped by promoters who make unrealistic claims about the potential for blockchain software.

But for now it sure is a great “buzzword” for unscrupulous operators to make a lot of money selling blockchain “snake-oil” to suckers. Just add the word “blockchain” to the name of your company and the stock will triple in a day. It’s like the dot.com bubble when any stock with “dot.com” in the name of the company soared. 99.9% of those stocks disappeared completely by 2003.

This article was written Josh Brown of The Reformed Broker

Let’s start our discussion with the technology which made Bitcoin possible called “blockchain”. In very simple terms the blockchain technology is a record of all transactions ever done in Bitcoin. Imagine a gigantic piece of paper that lists every transaction ever completed. Then imagine that there are thousands of copies of this paper, and all of them are automatically updated when any two people agree to exchange Bitcoins. Every time a transaction takes place all these copies are checked for consistency to make sure you actually have the Bitcoins you claim to have. If everything checks out the new transaction is added to all the pieces of paper at once.

This is the heart of the truly genius idea that is blockchain, and it is what it makes it possible to have certainty over a Bitcoin balance someone owns, without needing any central party (like a bank) to verify it. If all the pieces of paper agree then the balance is correct, and trying to doctor or fake all the pieces of paper at once is impossible. The best (and worst) thing about this technology is that it has been made available for absolutely FREE to anyone who wants to use it.